Double face foldable composite material for disruptive applications – MADly strong, Super FLEX

ended

Composite Sandwiches are a special class of composite materials combining structural performance to lightweight, which are increasingly used in aerospace, building, automotive, sport and leisure sectors, with an estimated CAGR of 8% in the next 5 years. One of the drawbacks consist in their stiffness and difficulty in joining together different parts, which imply the need to produce monolithic components, increasing enormously costs and complexity of realization, transport and mounting. CoRe has developed and patented MadFlex: an innovative composite sandwich design and production process, which makes the panel flexible (even rollable) on the one side and rigid/crushproof on the other, at comparable cost and using the same production facilities. MadFlex can replace standard composites in different sectors where flexibility can be a keystone to simplify storage, transport and mounting or can substitute flexible polymeric materials adding structural performance to lightness. In the aerospace sector CoRe is collaborating with Arescosmo and ESA for the development of rigid foldable structures for satellites; Leonardo and Airbus for producing fuselage and wings elements for aircrafts. The strategy to get to the market is to involve composite manufacturers under a license agreements for specific applications. The Serviceable Available Market (SAM) in the building, aerospace, transportation and sport /healthcare is estimated of 323 M€/y of which MadFlex could take >100 M€/y in 5 years through a portfolio of 14 applications. This will correspond to royalties for CoRe of 6.7 MEuro and EBIT of 5M€ (75% margin). The objectives of the feasibility study are: 1) Validate the technical feasibility and definition of 2 use cases in Aerospace and Architecture for demonstration in phase 2 project. 2) Define an agreement with 1 manufacturer; 3) Refine the Business Plan and Implementation Plan to reach the market; profiling and identification of VC to support the upscale.